About Ernest Cline

Ernest has worked as a short-order cook, fish gutter, plasma donor, elitist video store clerk, and tech support drone. His primary occupation, however, has always been geeking out, and he eventually threw aside those other promising career paths to express his love of pop culture fulltime as a spoken word artist and screenwriter. His 2009 film Fanboys, much to his surprise, became a cult phenomenon. Ready Player One, Cline’s first novel was sold in June 2010 in a bidding war. The film rights to the novel were sold the following day to Warner Bros. with Cline attached to write the screenplay.

Like the hero of Ready Player One, Cline spent much of his young adulthood working a series of low-paying tech support jobs that allowed him to surf the Internet while on the clock and research his many pop-culture obsessions. He's a huge fan of the Back to the Future film series and owns a 1982 DeLorean DMC-12 sports car that has been modified to look like the time-travelling vehicle from the films. Cline’s all-time favorite video game is Black Tiger, which figures prominently into the plot of Ready Player One.

Ernie has a daughter and lives in Austin, Texas with a large collection of classic video games.